Your Right to Know

WASHINGTON — Angling to avoid political peril, the Obama administration granted employers
another delay yesterday in a heavily criticized requirement that medium-to-larger firms cover their
workers or face fines.

In one of several concessions, the administration said companies with 50 to 99 employees will
have an additional year to comply with the coverage requirement, until Jan. 1, 2016.

For businesses with 100 or more employees, the requirement still will take effect in 2015. But
other newly announced provisions, affecting technical issues such as the calculation of working
hours, might help some of those companies.

More than 90 percent of companies with 50 or more employees already cover their workers, but the
debate has revolved around the potential impact on new and growing firms.

Most small businesses have fewer than 50 workers and are exempt from the mandate. However,
employer groups also were uneasy with a requirement that defines a full-time worker as averaging 30
hours a week.

Republicans trying to take control of the Senate in the November elections have once again made
President Barack Obama’s health-care law their top issue, casting it as a job killer. They want to
use the employer mandate to build that case, with anecdotes of bosses reluctant to hire a 50th
worker or slashing the hours of low-wage workers.

Yesterday’s moves by the administration seemed calibrated to reduce that risk.

The reaction of business groups was mixed.

“These final regulations secured the gold medal for greatest assistance to retailers and other
businesses and our employees,” said Neil Trautwein, a vice president of the National Retail
Federation.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce called it more of a respite than a fundamental change.

“This short-term fix also creates new problems for companies by moving the goal posts of the
mandate modestly when what we really need is a timeout,” president Thomas Donohue said.

Administration officials and the law’s supporters said the concessions were the sort of
reasonable accommodations that regulators make when implementing major legislation.

But Republicans said they smelled fear.

“It is clear Democrats don’t think they can survive politically if Obamacare is allowed to fully
go into effect,” said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., who as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee
oversees the tax penalties enforcing the mandate.

The law passed in 2010 required employers with more than 50 employees working 30 or more hours a
week to offer them suitable health coverage or face a penalty of $2,000 per employee in 2014.

The coverage requirement was originally supposed to have taken effect this year. But last
summer, the administration announced a one-year delay. Since then it’s been a gigantic
crisis-management drill.

In other provisions announced yesterday, the administration said:

• Employers with 100 or more workers still must begin offering affordable coverage to their
full-time workers beginning in 2015. But under the new rules, they can phase in that coverage for
these employees, covering only 70 percent in 2015 and 95 percent in 2016 and beyond. In addition,
the law defines
full time as people working an average of 30 hours a week per month. That concession is
expected to help firms who have a lot of workers averaging right around 30 hours.

• Volunteer firefighters and others who give of their time will not be considered employees
under the law. Some volunteer fire departments worried they might have to shut down if forced to
provide health insurance.

• Adjunct faculty members at colleges will be deemed to have worked 2 hours and 15 minutes for
each hour of classroom time they are assigned to teach. Officials said that means someone teaching
15 hours a week in the classroom would be considered “full time” and eligible for coverage.

• A one-year delay in a requirement that employers offer coverage to dependents of full-time
workers. Companies that are working to meet the goal will have until 2016 to comply.